Usually fighting for public rights and observable elections is just like running on a hamster wheel -- constant battles about uncertified, defective voting machines, hiding freedom of information documents, and quibble, quibble, quibble about hand counts, spot checks, digital signatures, cryptography, certifications, testing...but Germany just took a big short cut and got off the hamster wheel altogether! We can learn a lot from what Germany just did.

What's important is WHY Germany banned computerized voting. Newspapers gave the impression that Germany banned e-voting due to "security issues" or bugs. NOT SO: The ban was based on HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. This stopped e-voting dead in Germany. No more hamster wheel.

This decision represents spectacular progress for the US voting rights groups who believe computerized, secret vote counting violates inalienable rights. Germany gave us effective argumentation for this. It starts with reframing the issue of computerized voting into basic human rights.

The details of Germany's knock-out punch arguments are below. If you feel uncomfortable about computerized voting, the controversial Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and the new 2009 Holt Bill that expands on HAVA, here's real hope for change. For years now, leaders like voting rights lawyer Paul Lehto, Nancy Tobi (Democracy for New Hampshire/Election Defense Alliance), New York's Andi Novick, and Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, and have been examining these issues from the standpoint of human rights. We believe that counting votes on computers controlled by insiders violates inalienable rights, specifically the right to public scrutiny of public elections.

But the principles in the German decision are very much in line with the principles underlying our own democratic structure.

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As Paul Lehto explains, "We [the USA] insisted on the human rights provisions as a condition of approval of the post-war German Constitution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights came out in December 1948, and the German Constitution was signed off by Allies and went into effect May 23, 1949. We insisted on human rights, including free, genuine public elections, for post-war Germany. We conditioned our approval specifically on these human rights being 'inviolable and inalienable.' Meaning, they can't be violated and they can't be lost, waived or forfeited."

WHAT WOULD GERMANY DO ABOUT COMPUTERIZED VOTING MACHINES?

Last week's decision by Germany's high court ultimately prohibits voting machines from further use. Reasoning behind the decision is not about "security" or "bugs", but is specifically about human rights violations:

"The use of voting machines which electronically record the voters’ votes and electronically ascertain the election result only meets the constitutional requirements if the essential steps of the voting and of the ascertainment of the result can be examined reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject. "

It goes on to state that such examination must be available to the public; in fact it says "A complementary examination by the voter, by the electoral bodies or the general public";

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"The use of electronic voting machines requires that the essential steps of the voting and of the determination of the result [the count] can be examined by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject. This requirement results from the principle of the public nature of elections"

WHAT WOULD GERMANY DO ABOUT THE HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT and THE HOLT "VOTER CONFIDENCE" BILL (WHICH EXPANDS ON HAVA)?

Germany had its own version of something similar to HAVA. This court decision declares that legislation to be unconstitutional.